I'm going to have to get some pictures before posting an official location review, but I wanted to give a quick mention about my new favorite caching area in Radnor, PA- Saw Mill Park, Skunk Hollow, and The Willows.
All three parks are connected, and wow, just wow. Great scenery, hiking trails, and more than a dozen caches within an area small enough to cover on foot, but big enough to take half a day if you wanted to pick them all up. I have been stopping by on lunch break and picking up caches in ones and twos, but I have not been bringing my whole Geocaching kit, so I haven't had a camera with me.
As soon as I get some pictures, I'll make an official post about it, but I had to post something, because I can't get enough of these parks and would love to run into a fellow cacher there someday!
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Friday, October 19, 2012
Birthday Madness Part 2 - My busiest caching day ever!
Welcome to Part 2 of my Birthday Madness blog post!
Before yesterday, I had never had a full day by myself to cache. I have done the bulk of my caching on short trips during lunch break at work, and even on the weekends I can sometimes squeeze an hour or two at most. 95% of the time I have other, "more important" things to do, or plans with Emily and Jack. The closest I've ever come to a whole day caching was one of the days we spent at the shore back in August. Even then I may have had about 4 hours caching time, and I had to check in with the family a few times - they're beach people, I'm not, so they spent the day on the beach while I cached.
Yesterday was different. I had time to myself from 8:30 until 5:30, so I spent the entire time caching.
I submitted my first few caches right before I left the house, and while I was on the computer I noticed that a new multi cache showed up right down the road from Video Game History #2 - Frogger, and that nobody had found it yet. With my odds of getting an FTF being pretty good, I drove the 3 minutes over to Hangin' Here Watchin' The Trains and made the find. Both parts of the multi were within walking distance, so I was in and out of there with the FTF within 10 minutes, tops. Not that I was going to take it as an omen or anything, but this bode well for the rest of the day, and it was my second FTF within a week!
I have been spending a lot of time on the Geocaching web site looking into areas with high concentrations of caches, so my plan was to go toward a few of these spots, picking up anything else that popped up on my GPS on the way. Indian Orchard Park in Middletown is about a 10-15 minute drive from home with 6 caches listed within its borders, so I headed in that direction, picking up Taylor's Cache on the way.
Indian Orchard Park consists of a series of hiking trails right off of Rt. 352. The park itself is about 1/4 mile off the road, and I never would have known it existed without reading the cache descriptions. This also bode well for the day, as I love finding places that are off the beaten path a bit. The park itself is worthy of more love, so I'll post a location review for it sometime in the future, after I go back and get some decent pictures of the place.
I wandered the trails for a total of about 90 minutes, picking up all of the caches along the way. I did have a bit of an adventure - I had just picked up Wish it was summer and decided to work my way over to I am friends with Russell Crowe. The nearby trail looked like it circled the woods along the edge of Linvilla Orchards, but my GPS was pointing me through the woods. Here is where an experienced hiker or cacher would have stuck to the trail and made it to GZ in 5 minutes. Me, being a city boy (Ok, well, suburb boy) thought, "How bad could a walk through the woods be? I have GPS, so I won't get lost!" and decided to go off trail.
Dumb move.
I went about 100 feet before everything became incredibly overgrown. Being the abnormally large guy that I am, I decided that I could just walk over any undergrowth. That worked well enough to get me stuck even farther in the undergrowth and thickets. Still feeling upbeat, and now realizing that it would take a lot of effort to go back to where I left the trail, I decided to press on.
Dumb move.
40 minutes of bushwhacking later, I finally reached GZ, and then spent about 10 minutes of crawling around rotten logs looking for the cache. After my little trek through the woods there was no freaking way I was gonna leave here without logging it, even if it meant that I needed to live there and feed on berries and wild animals to survive. I had spotted a box turtle a little while back and marked the location on my GPS, just in case...
Luckily, I found the cache a few minutes later. I skipped going back through the woods (best decision that I made that day) and took the trail back, and yeah, it took me all of 5 minutes to get back to where my adventure all started. I'm sure I'll look back on this and laugh someday, but as it only happened 24 hours ago I'm still a little pissy about it. Oh well.
I only had two more caches to find in the park before leaving, and both of them were pretty easy. I did't have any more weird urges to leave the trail or anything, so I guess I learned my lesson.
After leaving the park, I drove right down the road to a quick cache and dash LPC. I know that some people get all hateful about LPCs, but personally, I have absolutely no problem with them. Sure, I wish some of them were a little more creative, but honestly, it puts caches in places that otherwise would have no other suitable option. After sweating out about 3 pounds of water weight on a misguided hike through the woods, this was just what the doctor ordered.
I picked up a few more local hides before heading down toward Delaware. I took a quick stop in Aston to pick up one of my DNFs from when I was first starting out - Ice Ice Baby. Wow, this is another one of those situations where a little experience made a world of difference. My first time there had been about two weeks after I started caching, and I spent a solid 20 minutes looking for it. This time, it took me all of 45 seconds to grab it. I was much more dependent on GPS (or in that case, Google Maps) back then and am now used to expanding my search a bit.
On the way down to Delaware I stopped by BAAAH HUMBUG!!!, which had been another DNF from back in August. This one has a lot of favorite points, and the logs imply that it is very tricky. Damn, they weren't kidding. I spent about 20 minutes looking around GZ, pretending that my GPS was a cell phone (it's still better than my actual "cell phone") when the workers from the nearby restaurant came outside to take their smoke breaks.
I was on the verge of leaving when a stray bit of sunlight reflected off of something I needed to see. 30 seconds later, cache in hand, I was laughing maniacally and signing the log. This one had been bugging me for two months, so I was thrilled to have picked it up.
I made the short trip to Delaware and picked up two more easy caches, and then headed home for the evening. All told, I found 16 caches, and only had one (expected) DNF. Not bad for a solo newbie cacher!
Caches found (or not) on October 18th:
Before yesterday, I had never had a full day by myself to cache. I have done the bulk of my caching on short trips during lunch break at work, and even on the weekends I can sometimes squeeze an hour or two at most. 95% of the time I have other, "more important" things to do, or plans with Emily and Jack. The closest I've ever come to a whole day caching was one of the days we spent at the shore back in August. Even then I may have had about 4 hours caching time, and I had to check in with the family a few times - they're beach people, I'm not, so they spent the day on the beach while I cached.
Yesterday was different. I had time to myself from 8:30 until 5:30, so I spent the entire time caching.
I submitted my first few caches right before I left the house, and while I was on the computer I noticed that a new multi cache showed up right down the road from Video Game History #2 - Frogger, and that nobody had found it yet. With my odds of getting an FTF being pretty good, I drove the 3 minutes over to Hangin' Here Watchin' The Trains and made the find. Both parts of the multi were within walking distance, so I was in and out of there with the FTF within 10 minutes, tops. Not that I was going to take it as an omen or anything, but this bode well for the rest of the day, and it was my second FTF within a week!
I have been spending a lot of time on the Geocaching web site looking into areas with high concentrations of caches, so my plan was to go toward a few of these spots, picking up anything else that popped up on my GPS on the way. Indian Orchard Park in Middletown is about a 10-15 minute drive from home with 6 caches listed within its borders, so I headed in that direction, picking up Taylor's Cache on the way.
Indian Orchard Park consists of a series of hiking trails right off of Rt. 352. The park itself is about 1/4 mile off the road, and I never would have known it existed without reading the cache descriptions. This also bode well for the day, as I love finding places that are off the beaten path a bit. The park itself is worthy of more love, so I'll post a location review for it sometime in the future, after I go back and get some decent pictures of the place.
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| On Google Maps, just search for Copes Lane off of Rt. 352 |
Dumb move.
I went about 100 feet before everything became incredibly overgrown. Being the abnormally large guy that I am, I decided that I could just walk over any undergrowth. That worked well enough to get me stuck even farther in the undergrowth and thickets. Still feeling upbeat, and now realizing that it would take a lot of effort to go back to where I left the trail, I decided to press on.
Dumb move.
40 minutes of bushwhacking later, I finally reached GZ, and then spent about 10 minutes of crawling around rotten logs looking for the cache. After my little trek through the woods there was no freaking way I was gonna leave here without logging it, even if it meant that I needed to live there and feed on berries and wild animals to survive. I had spotted a box turtle a little while back and marked the location on my GPS, just in case...
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| Poor little thing had no idea how close it came to becoming lunch. I even planned to make primitive survival tools out of its shell. |
I only had two more caches to find in the park before leaving, and both of them were pretty easy. I did't have any more weird urges to leave the trail or anything, so I guess I learned my lesson.
After leaving the park, I drove right down the road to a quick cache and dash LPC. I know that some people get all hateful about LPCs, but personally, I have absolutely no problem with them. Sure, I wish some of them were a little more creative, but honestly, it puts caches in places that otherwise would have no other suitable option. After sweating out about 3 pounds of water weight on a misguided hike through the woods, this was just what the doctor ordered.
I picked up a few more local hides before heading down toward Delaware. I took a quick stop in Aston to pick up one of my DNFs from when I was first starting out - Ice Ice Baby. Wow, this is another one of those situations where a little experience made a world of difference. My first time there had been about two weeks after I started caching, and I spent a solid 20 minutes looking for it. This time, it took me all of 45 seconds to grab it. I was much more dependent on GPS (or in that case, Google Maps) back then and am now used to expanding my search a bit.
On the way down to Delaware I stopped by BAAAH HUMBUG!!!, which had been another DNF from back in August. This one has a lot of favorite points, and the logs imply that it is very tricky. Damn, they weren't kidding. I spent about 20 minutes looking around GZ, pretending that my GPS was a cell phone (it's still better than my actual "cell phone") when the workers from the nearby restaurant came outside to take their smoke breaks.
I was on the verge of leaving when a stray bit of sunlight reflected off of something I needed to see. 30 seconds later, cache in hand, I was laughing maniacally and signing the log. This one had been bugging me for two months, so I was thrilled to have picked it up.
I made the short trip to Delaware and picked up two more easy caches, and then headed home for the evening. All told, I found 16 caches, and only had one (expected) DNF. Not bad for a solo newbie cacher!
Caches found (or not) on October 18th:
Birthday Madness Part 1 - My first two caches are live!
The past few days have been so busy, cache-wise, that I'm splitting this into two separate blog posts.
As I mentioned before, my 40th birthday fell on the 17th, so it was the perfect opportunity to use up some of my excess vacation time and take a few days off to both go caching and to officially submit my first few caches for review. I'm happy to report that my first official caches (not counting my adopted one) went live yesterday! Video Game History #1 - Breakout and Video Game History #2 - Frogger are officially out in the wild, and several people found both caches on the day they went live.
I live within walking distance of Eastlake Park In Ridley Park, and there was only one cache in the 14 acre area, so this was a natural spot for me to place them. I was able to find spots that fit the theme of both caches, and I'm sticking by my "no generic cache container" rule. Each container is pretty unique, though I have to admit that while Breakout is like nothing I've ever found, Frogger was inspired by a few caches I picked up when I first started caching. Frogger is probably the more fun of the two containers as well.
This whole process was a series of firsts for me. Originally, I wasn't sure what to put in the cache as an FTF prize. Since Breakout was my first cache ever, I ended up splurging and left a new 8 GB thumb drive. Frogger is a smaller container, so my choices were pretty limited. Conveniently I had a Where's George? dollar that I picked up at the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire about a month ago. Considering that it's kinda sorta trackable (not many people bother logging them) AND it's worth $1, it was a win/win for everyone involved.
I had spent a little time over the past few days getting averaged coordinates, and finally dropped both caches off on my birthday this past Wednesday. I had been writing up the cache descriptions for a little while, and since I knew I would be in the area caching yesterday, I submitted them for review first thing in the morning. I wasn't sure if the local reviewer would actually come out and check the caches or not, but I guess the answer is "or not", as they went live within about an hour of me posting them.
Cache number 3 was also ready to go, but apparently my placement is in an area that is unsuitable as it is pretty close to a train overpass. The area itself is safe - there is a huge fence blocking anyone from getting near the tracks - but its very proximity to the train could be an issue due to federal law or something.
It's really no big deal as I had a "Plan B" spot picked out already. It's less related to the theme of the cache, but it's in a busy park that has no other caches, and I'm sure it will get plenty of cacher traffic. when I took it down to move it I noticed that I needed to beef up the waterproofing, so this being told that I had to move the cache alerted me to a problem that I may not have caught until it was too late. Sweet.
All in all, I'm pleased with how the caches came out, though I can foresee the next ones being more unique.
Shameless plug - if you're in the area, come check them out! The three caches in this park are all within walking distance of one another, though it may be a bit of a stroll. Come out on a nice day, check out the scenery, and find some caches!
As I mentioned before, my 40th birthday fell on the 17th, so it was the perfect opportunity to use up some of my excess vacation time and take a few days off to both go caching and to officially submit my first few caches for review. I'm happy to report that my first official caches (not counting my adopted one) went live yesterday! Video Game History #1 - Breakout and Video Game History #2 - Frogger are officially out in the wild, and several people found both caches on the day they went live.
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| Breakout from the Atari 2600 version. Wikimedia Commons image shown. |
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| Frogger. Wikimedia Commons image shown. |
I had spent a little time over the past few days getting averaged coordinates, and finally dropped both caches off on my birthday this past Wednesday. I had been writing up the cache descriptions for a little while, and since I knew I would be in the area caching yesterday, I submitted them for review first thing in the morning. I wasn't sure if the local reviewer would actually come out and check the caches or not, but I guess the answer is "or not", as they went live within about an hour of me posting them.
Cache number 3 was also ready to go, but apparently my placement is in an area that is unsuitable as it is pretty close to a train overpass. The area itself is safe - there is a huge fence blocking anyone from getting near the tracks - but its very proximity to the train could be an issue due to federal law or something.
It's really no big deal as I had a "Plan B" spot picked out already. It's less related to the theme of the cache, but it's in a busy park that has no other caches, and I'm sure it will get plenty of cacher traffic. when I took it down to move it I noticed that I needed to beef up the waterproofing, so this being told that I had to move the cache alerted me to a problem that I may not have caught until it was too late. Sweet.
All in all, I'm pleased with how the caches came out, though I can foresee the next ones being more unique.
Shameless plug - if you're in the area, come check them out! The three caches in this park are all within walking distance of one another, though it may be a bit of a stroll. Come out on a nice day, check out the scenery, and find some caches!
Monday, October 15, 2012
I adopted a cache today!
While I have only been caching for a few months, I have been interested in it for much longer. My Geocaching.com account actually dates back to 2005, and over the years I would periodically check to see if there were any local caches and pine over my lack of a GPS.
Back when I found my first cache in 2011, I had about a week where I was on the edge of obsession, much like how I am now. One day at work, I checked out the map and saw a cache right around the corner, less than five minutes away. The cache was called Bryn Mawr Park and Memorial and was located on one of the main roads in the area.
The Google Map of the coordinates showed the cache in a parking lot, so how hard could it be to find? I printed the cache page, with the hint, drove to the parking lot, and spent 15 minutes wandering around in a clueless manner. What I didn't know then, but do know now, was that I was looking for a Nano hide. The hint basically told me everything I needed to know except for the fact that I was looking for something that small. I didn't know that those types of containers existed, and would never have thought to look in what I now know to be a very obvious spot.
Well, here we are in 2012, with me now having over 100 finds, and the cache has been disabled since May. I have been picking up all of the other local hides, and this one disabled listing has been nagging me more than anything else, as it is so freaking close to work. In going over the logs I noticed that the only issue appeared to be that the log was full, so I figured "what the hell" and took the little trip over there on lunch.
Sure enough, the cache was still there. The log had gotten wet over the months, and a little bit of rust messed it up a bit, but the cache was otherwise fine.
I posted a note (I didn't want log credit for a cache that didn't technically exist) with the pic and left it at that. A little while later, I received an email from the CO explaining that he had moved away and would be unable to take care of it anymore, and offering me the chance to adopt and maintain the cache. So I did. I printed a new log, dried the cache out thoroughly, and put it right back where it's lived for the past few years.
This whole cache adoption thing was a bit of a surprise, coming as it does a few days before my other caches get posted, but it's also a no brainer. It is very easy for me to maintain this cache, and anything I can do to keep active caches in the area means that I'm doing my part keeping other local cachers entertained.
Cache in this post:
Back when I found my first cache in 2011, I had about a week where I was on the edge of obsession, much like how I am now. One day at work, I checked out the map and saw a cache right around the corner, less than five minutes away. The cache was called Bryn Mawr Park and Memorial and was located on one of the main roads in the area.
The Google Map of the coordinates showed the cache in a parking lot, so how hard could it be to find? I printed the cache page, with the hint, drove to the parking lot, and spent 15 minutes wandering around in a clueless manner. What I didn't know then, but do know now, was that I was looking for a Nano hide. The hint basically told me everything I needed to know except for the fact that I was looking for something that small. I didn't know that those types of containers existed, and would never have thought to look in what I now know to be a very obvious spot.
Well, here we are in 2012, with me now having over 100 finds, and the cache has been disabled since May. I have been picking up all of the other local hides, and this one disabled listing has been nagging me more than anything else, as it is so freaking close to work. In going over the logs I noticed that the only issue appeared to be that the log was full, so I figured "what the hell" and took the little trip over there on lunch.
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| Google Street View of the parking area. |
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| Yes, I took this with my "cell phone". It has a "camera". |
This whole cache adoption thing was a bit of a surprise, coming as it does a few days before my other caches get posted, but it's also a no brainer. It is very easy for me to maintain this cache, and anything I can do to keep active caches in the area means that I'm doing my part keeping other local cachers entertained.
Cache in this post:
Saturday, October 13, 2012
14 Consecutive Days, and my first FTF!
Well, I did it! I found caches every day from September 30th through today, so 14 days straight. This may not be a huge accomplishment for some folks, but it was incredibly challenging getting out either before work or on lunch break on every weekday, and squeezing enough time in on busy weekends to pick up a cache or two.
Part of the problem is that I am rapidly running out of easy caches. Because of my time constraints caching on lunch break, I have been going for a lot of easy nano hides and LPCs. As those are running out, I have ended up having to look for more challenging hides, and the time crunch of an hour (including drive time) is making things tough.
I did manage to nab my first FTF yesterday - Don't miss the target. I have alerts set up to text me if a new cache shows up in my area, and I got the alert just before 10 AM, while I was at work, for one that was about 15 minutes away by car.
I sprinted out of the building and made it to the nearby parking area, right as two people were getting out of a car three spots over. I totally thought that they were there for the cache, and my first thought was one of disappointment, as I really wanted the FTF, but my second was one of interest, as I don't know any other local cachers and would like to meet some of them.
Alas, they were actually just there to park their car, so when they walked off I made the quick grab and got my first FTF. Pretty exciting, though it did mess me up for lunch break as I basically took it 45 minutes after I arrived. It's a good thing I don't get hungry in the middle of the day anyway, or I would have been screwed.
I'm looking forward to next week! I'm taking a few days off for my birthday (Turning 40. Yay?) and plan to release my first two caches into the wild, and also plan to spend at least one whole day caching. There is an old DNF in PA down near Delaware that I want to try to go for again, and I'd like to make another stop in DE while I'm down there, just to add to the two I picked up there previously. Can't wait!
Part of the problem is that I am rapidly running out of easy caches. Because of my time constraints caching on lunch break, I have been going for a lot of easy nano hides and LPCs. As those are running out, I have ended up having to look for more challenging hides, and the time crunch of an hour (including drive time) is making things tough.
I did manage to nab my first FTF yesterday - Don't miss the target. I have alerts set up to text me if a new cache shows up in my area, and I got the alert just before 10 AM, while I was at work, for one that was about 15 minutes away by car.
I sprinted out of the building and made it to the nearby parking area, right as two people were getting out of a car three spots over. I totally thought that they were there for the cache, and my first thought was one of disappointment, as I really wanted the FTF, but my second was one of interest, as I don't know any other local cachers and would like to meet some of them.
Alas, they were actually just there to park their car, so when they walked off I made the quick grab and got my first FTF. Pretty exciting, though it did mess me up for lunch break as I basically took it 45 minutes after I arrived. It's a good thing I don't get hungry in the middle of the day anyway, or I would have been screwed.
I'm looking forward to next week! I'm taking a few days off for my birthday (Turning 40. Yay?) and plan to release my first two caches into the wild, and also plan to spend at least one whole day caching. There is an old DNF in PA down near Delaware that I want to try to go for again, and I'd like to make another stop in DE while I'm down there, just to add to the two I picked up there previously. Can't wait!
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Two notable caches, and getting close to personal goal.
I was able to take another crack at the Springfield Trail today, and found the next cache down the trail - Cobras Rock! Just like before, it was a scenic walk to ground zero, and this one was actually close to a little picnic area near a rock wall. As I had no clue that anything like this was back here, this was pretty exciting.
Nobody had found this cache since February, and there were a few DNFs logged by others, so I wasn't sure if it would even be here. After a few minutes of poking around, and after needing to break out my pair of work gloves, I found it!
I'm totally going to take Jack and Emily back here soon. He'll like the area back here, and this cache was places as part of a boy scout project, so he'll appreciate that as well.
On lunch break today I took another crack at another one of my non-logged DNFs that has been driving me nuts - Addendum. This is a short drive from work, in a little park off of a little street, and I have already been here twice before looking for it. It has quite a few favorite points, and the logs imply that it's tough, but now that I found it I have to say it was more of a lateral thinking puzzle than a difficult hide. When you arrive at GZ, there are so many possible hiding spots that it's almost overwhelming. I was actually walking back to my car today when I had my "Aha!" moment and turned back and immediately found it. It wasn't what I expected, but in a good way, and it was totally worth a favorite point.
Speaking of favorites, I've reached a point where I need to go through and reevaluate what caches I logged as favorites when I first started out. My whole view on caching has evolved quite a bit in the few months that I've been caching, and what I like now is nothing like what I liked then. I like the favorite point system, but damn, I'd like 30 points to spend, rather than the 10 or 11 I have now.
Personal Goal
I'm almost at 14 consecutive days of caching! I know that this is not a big deal, compared to the people who go at least a cache a day for over a year, but considering that I work full time and am busy most weekends, this has been quite a challenge. I seriously hope that I can pull this off!
Caches in this post:
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| Rock wall. Not sure if that's the correct geological term for it, but oh well. |
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| I was the first person to find this in 8 months,. |
On lunch break today I took another crack at another one of my non-logged DNFs that has been driving me nuts - Addendum. This is a short drive from work, in a little park off of a little street, and I have already been here twice before looking for it. It has quite a few favorite points, and the logs imply that it's tough, but now that I found it I have to say it was more of a lateral thinking puzzle than a difficult hide. When you arrive at GZ, there are so many possible hiding spots that it's almost overwhelming. I was actually walking back to my car today when I had my "Aha!" moment and turned back and immediately found it. It wasn't what I expected, but in a good way, and it was totally worth a favorite point.
Speaking of favorites, I've reached a point where I need to go through and reevaluate what caches I logged as favorites when I first started out. My whole view on caching has evolved quite a bit in the few months that I've been caching, and what I like now is nothing like what I liked then. I like the favorite point system, but damn, I'd like 30 points to spend, rather than the 10 or 11 I have now.
Personal Goal
I'm almost at 14 consecutive days of caching! I know that this is not a big deal, compared to the people who go at least a cache a day for over a year, but considering that I work full time and am busy most weekends, this has been quite a challenge. I seriously hope that I can pull this off!
Caches in this post:
Saturday, October 6, 2012
GSAK
I have been using the trial version of GSAK for a while now and finally registered last night. For those of you unfamiliar with it, GSAK - the Geocaching Swiss Army Knife - is a Geocaching database. You link it to your account, and it is able to download and update cache information to a database stored on your computer. This allows you to easily create GPX files for your GPS receiver with whatever information you require.
It has some very impressive features. You can define areas on a map and download just the caches in that area. You can have it download any pocket queries that you run. You can filter and sort by all sorts of criteria, and you can then take that filtered data and create a GPX file of it. You get the idea.
There are also tons of macros to automate tasks, so for example, I am using a tool called FindStatGen to create a detailed cache report that I post to my Geocaching profile. I am also setting things up so that I can download current data for about 4500 local caches (this covers pretty much anything within reasonable driving distance) that I can update once a week and keep in my Garmin. I will be posting a tutorial on this shortly, as it's been incredibly handy.
All in all, this has been a great tool, and well worth the $30.
It has some very impressive features. You can define areas on a map and download just the caches in that area. You can have it download any pocket queries that you run. You can filter and sort by all sorts of criteria, and you can then take that filtered data and create a GPX file of it. You get the idea.
There are also tons of macros to automate tasks, so for example, I am using a tool called FindStatGen to create a detailed cache report that I post to my Geocaching profile. I am also setting things up so that I can download current data for about 4500 local caches (this covers pretty much anything within reasonable driving distance) that I can update once a week and keep in my Garmin. I will be posting a tutorial on this shortly, as it's been incredibly handy.
All in all, this has been a great tool, and well worth the $30.
Friday, October 5, 2012
Great local caching area - The Springfield Trail
I found a terrific caching area today - the Springfield Trail. This is another one of those things where I had no freaking clue that there was a hiking trail back in this area, so the thrill of discovery just added to the caching fun.
I have a confession - I actually found this trail back in August, but since I couldn't find the cache at the time I denied its existence until today.
Everything about today's caching experience was cool. I left to go to work a little earlier than usual, and parked my car by Jane Lownes park in Springfield. This is a cute little park, with a little basketball court and some playground equipment. As the school year is in full swing, nobody was around and I had the park to myself.
As I reached the basketball court I heard a noise and looked up to see a large hawk perched on one of the basketball backboards. I must have startled it, as it flew off right away, but it was seriously impressive.
If you didn't know the trail was accessible from here (there are other ways to get there) you would have no idea that it existed. To get there, you push through the underbrush and trees just past the basketball court, cross a little gravel drainage wash, and then follow the blazes on the trees.
When you cross into the woods and follow the blazes, you have to descend a pretty steep little trail to a rickety little bridge that crosses a stream. Part of what I found fascinating is that the nature trail is obviously at least partially man made, with giant concrete storm drains placed periodically. Things are pretty well overgrown, so this work must have been done quite a few years ago. There's actually a sign down the trail a bit which uses an old font on it that looks to be from the '60s or '70s. I could be totally off, but that's my guess.
There are a few caches back here, but I only really had time to pick up the first one - Stilted Stash. This had been a previous non-logged DNF for me back in August, but I thought about where I was looking back then and adjusted my search and found the cache in a few minutes. It's funny - I remember thinking how much I learned between July and August, and here it is October and my caching knowledge has probably doubled since then. I love finding caches that I struggled with before, it really gives me a sense of accomplishment.
I took a little stroll down the path a bit, toward the next cache, but I really didn't have a lot of time to waste so I turned back and went on to spend the rest of the day at work. I'll come out here again in the next week or two to go for the other hides.
I'm beginning to sound like a broken record (wow, that reference is really helping me show my age), but if you're in the area, check this trail out.
Cache in this post:
I have a confession - I actually found this trail back in August, but since I couldn't find the cache at the time I denied its existence until today.
Everything about today's caching experience was cool. I left to go to work a little earlier than usual, and parked my car by Jane Lownes park in Springfield. This is a cute little park, with a little basketball court and some playground equipment. As the school year is in full swing, nobody was around and I had the park to myself.
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| Bottom right corner is the road to park on, and you can see the basketball court on the way to the trees (and the smiley). |
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| Go down the hill and across the basketball court. The trail entrance is through the trees, near the red circle. |
If you didn't know the trail was accessible from here (there are other ways to get there) you would have no idea that it existed. To get there, you push through the underbrush and trees just past the basketball court, cross a little gravel drainage wash, and then follow the blazes on the trees.
When you cross into the woods and follow the blazes, you have to descend a pretty steep little trail to a rickety little bridge that crosses a stream. Part of what I found fascinating is that the nature trail is obviously at least partially man made, with giant concrete storm drains placed periodically. Things are pretty well overgrown, so this work must have been done quite a few years ago. There's actually a sign down the trail a bit which uses an old font on it that looks to be from the '60s or '70s. I could be totally off, but that's my guess.
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| Walking the trail, looking across the creek to a bit of sunlight peeking in. |
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| Coming back down the trail toward where I entered. |
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| A little farther down the trail. |
Cache in this post:
Monday, October 1, 2012
Found a Benchmark
In digging through the Geocaching website, I ran into the section on benchmark hunting. I have known what benchmarks are for some years now, after seeing one of them on a sidewalk somewhere and looking up what it was, and I was intrigued when I saw that the benchmark database was available on the Geocaching site.
I took a look through the database and saw what looked to be an easy one within a mile or so of my job, so I took a quick look today on lunch break and found it.
I'm not sure that I have the time to devote to this, but it was certainly neat to track down. There are a few more easy ones near home, and I'll see if I can't find them in the next few weeks, but some of the local ones have either never been found, or are on private property, so this is one of those things that I'm filing under "neat" but not "have to do".
I took a look through the database and saw what looked to be an easy one within a mile or so of my job, so I took a quick look today on lunch break and found it.
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| Right on top of a sewer drain. |
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